Legacy
by goldnote
Summary: Will this senior leave her mark on the band program or will her fears of being forgotten come true?


_Let me know if I should continue on or not; for now it is "In-Progress." Happy Reading!_

_(P.S. There is something fun about this: every paragraph is 100 words)._

"It's all yours," I said as I locked up the percussion cabinet, absentmindedly pulling on a strand of my honey-golden hair as I started my way back through the forest of chairs and music stands. The band room had always been a mess, but it was particularly bad tonight, the night of our first marching band practice. Normally I would clean up after practice, but I was too sore. Besides, it wasn't really my job. I could do whatever I wanted now that the rest of the band members had gone home. However, sleep was what I most wanted.

I tossed the keys back to the director, the middle aged man with the dark hair and bright green eyes standing in the front of the room. He saw me look with a heavy sigh on the tangle of metal and plastic barricading us from one another and practically read my mind, saying it was something we could clean up tomorrow. Grateful, even though it meant more work before practice early tomorrow morning, I started picking my way to where my band leader stood, waiting with an amused smile as I tripped and nearly fell. "Great," I said, straightening up.

My director's smile fell as he noticed, even in the dim florescent light shining through the dusty ceiling panels, a trickle of blood stream neatly down my leg. I felt the sting a few moments after I followed his concerned gaze to my knee, but could hardly feel anything more emotional than slight annoyance that having to clean the cut would add more seconds onto the wait to crawl into my nice soft bed. It was late already and I was fully ready to ignore the blood, what little there was, and continue on my way out; I was exhausted.

"Nasty little scratch there," the director said, pointing at my leg as if it weren't obvious already. I rolled my eyes and quickly overcame the rest of the barriers to stand next to my director and overlook the band room as though we were on some sort of mountain overlooking a great and glorious landscape. However, our landscape was leaving something to be desired in terms of glory and our mountain was the director's podium, old and beat up and absolutely in need of a good vacuuming. Although it was all together gross, it had been my mountain, my peak.

As the drum major, I had certain responsibilities and perks. A responsibility was to clean up the band room after practice, one that the director himself had allowed me to bow out of for the sheer fact he would have come into school tomorrow morning to find me passed out in the middle of the room, partly digested by cheap stands and bulk furniture. A perk was the fact I got to stand on the podium when I conducted. Normally, the podium was off limits to everyone but the director, so I felt pretty special when practice time came around.

I had been in seventh grade when I found out what a conductor did and what a podium meant. To most kids in other music programs, I bet podiums wouldn't be a big deal. Band itself wouldn't have been a big deal to a normal adolescent past ninth grade. However, I thought the podium and especially band was pretty great. In fact, it wasn't just great, it was life. Whenever I told someone band was my life, I would always be laughed at, so I stopped saying that. I stopped talking about band in general, even to my friends, sadly.

Even though there were many kids in band, even the football jocks and science geeks had a spot in the group, no one seemed as dedicated as I was. It became embarrassing to be the only one talking about band at lunch or the only one excited about a practice or performance. I don't know what it was, nor will. I don't know if people were as embarrassed to be in band as I was when I was laughed at for my enthusiasm or if I was just obsessed. Some people called me obsessed. I started calling those people jerks.

Of course, calling people jerks is never a good idea and, after a confrontation with a rather snotty girl in a hallway, I learned to just think it. It didn't matter how loud I thought it, how much I wished I could say it; as long as I kept the words to myself, that person wouldn't know I thought they were as annoying as I thought I was. Sounds harsh, but I decided very early on in high school that I was going to deal it as hard as I got it. Playing nice never got anyone far, did it?

That was a mentality my director stopped me from reasoning with when I was about to take action against those who would vandalize the trophy cases or threaten to break instruments, no matter if they really did have the intentions to do so or not. It wasn't something I thought was a funny joke. The director, just a frustrated that students who seemed perfectly happy in band would take such a vicious approach to how they repaid their music program. It just didn't make sense. Even the principal had no idea why this would be, and interviewed students. No luck.

The only reason this sort of attitude would be directed at the band was because the band program, in light of the growing amount of young junior high students starting band every year, the instrumental music department was starting to see an increase in funding from the school to the program. It was necessary to cover costs for more stands, more music, instrument rental, and, probably most important considering new musicians don't know how to handle their instruments with care, repair costs. Because the students were seeing increasing quality of items the department had, it was a theory to consider.

Jealousy of the band program's good fortune encouraged students, I suggested once to the director, who then might have dropped the idea past the ears of the principal, to act out against the band. They enjoyed playing their instruments, but if they had heard that the music department got a new french horn instead of the science department getting a new set of beakers and chemicals or the football team a few extra buses to take to games, of course there was going to be a lashing out. It was just ridiculous, I thought, standing in front of the room.

However, I haven't done too much to help this band out, either, I contemplated. What have you done? the little voice asked. You stand in the back with a pair of sticks during band class, you hang out after school, you're always the first one here, and I just happen to have gotten the drum major job this season because the other drum major transferred schools. Boy, you're talented at being useless and always around... What must the director think of you? He teaches band, not babysits useless drummers. How sad and dependent you are on this thing called music...

"Don't you want a bandage or something?" My director's words brought me out of my thoughts, out of my own self-dismantling mood. I remembered I was still bleeding, even if just a little bit at this point. I shook my head. "I don't need a bandage, but thanks. It'll heal on it's own. Just a little scratch, like you said." I waited until my director smiled and turned away before licking my fingers and rubbing the blood away, wiping my hand on my shorts. It wasn't like I had never bled while being clumsy in the band room before.

"You know, Courtney," my director, my mentor started. I turned to look at him, my knight in shining armor wiping the sweat out of his eyes as he leaned against the wall and sorted through some lost and tattered marching music. I could guess where this was going. I had heard this lecture before. "You need to have more faith in yourself. You're always happy, upbeat, outgoing, but I know the way you pound on yourself. You make mistakes, but you fix them faster than anyone, and you hardly ever make mistakes to begin with. You give confidence to others-"

"But I hardly ever have confidence in myself," I finished, trying to be as polite as possible as I tried putting an end to the speech I had heard before. I should never have told Mr. Jay about my doubts, I sometimes wondered, and tried playing out scenarios where he didn't know all that he knew about me. None of them fit with what I would ever expect band to be. None of the musicians in the band were useless: they all had their purpose. It was just that I liked to consider myself special, even through all the doubt.

Mr. Jay organized the rest of the music in silence, the flipping and stacking of the half-sheet papers louder than my footsteps as I crept around the band room, looking for any loose items or the necklace one flute member had lost earlier in the day. I felt partly guilty, partly relieved; I loved Mr. Jay like my own brother, but I disliked it when he talked to me about my problems. I had problems, I knew it. Just small ones, like the fear of being forgotten. Or fear of being lost. Or even fear of being thrown away.

Everyone said it couldn't ever happen and I stopped telling everybody about it once I had enough negative response to limit my yearning to find another person like me. No one in this school really cared about being remembered. They wanted to get the hell out, as fast as possible, and the moment the class of the year got their diplomas, they got their wish. Every year since I was in junior band and didn't even know how to hold my drumsticks, I saw it happen. And there was always one band nerd in every grade, the ones I respected.

But, after they graduated and I moved up one more year, they never came back. They all said they had loved the band so much, loved the music, and wanted to be remembered for all they had done. I always remembered, in honor of that wish. Now, with this being my last year, my last season with the band, it didn't seem like there was anyone to carry on my wish of being remembered. I hardly fit in with my own class, was too old for the juniors and sophomores, and the freshmen were terrified of talking with a senior.

I wasn't going to be remembered, I was sure of it. Again, what had I done for the band? I mean, I loved it, most of it, all of it. But even love isn't enough to get someone to their goals. Neither is hard work or dedication. I had found out today that, even though I was a drum major, I didn't feel like I was the leader I was supposed to be. I didn't feel like I belonged up there: I was second best, the original major leaving the band with no choice but to be stuck with me.

What sort of legacy would I leave behind? What would people say about me once I was gone? Would it even matter if someone remembered me? Why would I care two, five, eight years down the road? Would I even care at all by the end of this year? My certificate of completing secondary education was only a few hundred days away. Would I be ready to leave my band? These were not questions I should have began to ponder in the late evening with my mind on a half-buzz from all the drills we ran through in practice.

I rolled up my copy of the marching show score and drill set, putting them in my drawstring bag I had decorated myself with silhouettes of my favorite drum and bugle corps insignias. It had always been a dream in the back of my mind to join a drum corps, to travel the nation with a brand new drumline. But I had stuck with my own high school marching band, in hopes of meeting my own expectations of success and commitment and fulfillment. "I'll find my answers soon," I said to my director, walking out the door. "Goodnight, and thanks."


End file.
